Eva’s Bowl

Abstract

Eva, I have your bowl, the green one from your Pyrex mixing bowl set. I bought it for eight dollars at an antique store in the small town of Sterling, Ontario, but, unfortunately, the yellow, red, and blue bowls weren’t with it. I know the bowl is yours because you put a waterproof label on the bottom with your name written in laundry marker. I tried to peel it off, but it was stuck solidly, so I left it.I’m glad you used that label because now I get to imagine you taking the bowl to a potluck. I wonder what you brought. Something cold, I bet, since these bowls had no lids or handles and weren’t typically put in the oven. Perhaps the occasion was a large church social on a summer day, and the label assured that your bowl would be returned after the dishes were washed and dried by the assembly line of chatting women in aprons.Corning Glass Works in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, manufactured Pyrex mixing bowl sets from 1946 to 1977. Pyrex used other shades of green, but the bright green of your bowl was used only for sets of the bowls. Collectors can find it difficult to specify the manufacture year of Pyrex bowls, but a few clues date your bowl to the 1960s. The Opal Ware glass is thinner and the base is slightly rounder than bowls from the late 1940s and ’50s. The model number, 403, placed above the bowl’s centered PYREX backstamp, with “Made in the U.S.A.” curving underneath, is typical of green bowls in mixing sets from the early 1960s.Like you, my mother used a Pyrex mixing bowl set. Hers was a wedding gift. Am I correct in thinking you received your set on the joyous occasion of your wedding? As a child, I loved the colors of the bowls but was particularly fond of the sounds they made: notes rang out like bells when utensils hit their rims, and clunked when separated or nestled back together.When I cleared out my mother’s house, after her death five years ago, I couldn’t find her set. Perhaps when cooking for one became first onerous and then confusing, she had given the set to the young couple next door. I wonder what happened to your other bowls, Eva, and how the green one became separated from the set. But I don’t really want to know, as chances are this would also be a sad tale of your departure.My elderly aunt in the United Kingdom recently told me that my mother sent her home after an early 1960s visit to Winnipeg, Manitoba, with a set of these mixing bowls. She uses them to this day. Wouldn’t you agree that my aunt’s sixty years of use deserves a lifetime cooking award from Pyrex?I received a set from my ex a few years after we split up. He noticed them in the window of a hip vintage shop in downtown Toronto and surprised me one Christmas by showing up at my door with the bowls wrapped in a box. I think he too deserves a lifetime achievement award for the love and forgiveness shown in this gift.Eva, when I brought your bowl home, I could tell you’d never put it in a dishwasher, as the paint on the outside remained vibrant. But I was disappointed to see the glass inside was dirtier than I had first noticed. I scrubbed off the brown stains and the layer of hardened grease with baking soda and dish soap, revealing deep scratches that looked as if the tip of a sharp knife had been used, repeatedly and aggressively, to chisel away at something frozen. A prudent cook wouldn’t do that to a glass bowl, especially one she was fond of, so I know it wasn’t you. Perhaps, after your death, your husband kept forgetting to take meat out of the freezer until late in the afternoon and then faced supper without you.